Al Qaeda claims responsibility

All that’s lacking in the (apparent) al Qaeda videotaped claim of responsibility is the usual statement of resentment over the success of Ferdinand and Isabella in driving out the Muslims from Spain in 1492. Reader Daniel Aronstein, who has been pursuing a numerological analysis of matters related to the Madrid massacre, writes to advise that “the year 911 in the MUSLIM calendar was the last year of their occupation of Iberia.” In any event, today’s New York Times has a good story summarizing the investigation as of last night: “Video claims Al Qaeda set blasts in Spain; officials arrest 3 Moroccans and two Indians.”
In the Telegraph, Mark Steyn’s column is devoted to consideration of the massacre: “World at war.” Steyn’s column indirectly addresses the false inference that the Spanish demonstrators protesting Prime Minister Aznar’s foreign policy have drawn from the attack. The Islamofascists lust for destruction and domination. Their good will cannot be purchased by anything so paltry as an alteration of Spanish foreign policy. (Courtesy of Malcolm Smordin.)
In an unsigned editorial in the Jerusalem Post, the paper speaks institutionally with the authority of experience:

Now, some Spaniards can be expected to blame themselves for their own victimization. If Spain had not joined the war on Iraq, they will say, it would not have been attacked. We cannot but implore Spain to avoid that kind of thinking; we’ve been through all that and can now confidently say that Spain was targeted not for anything it did or failed to do, but for what it is, namely a country that embraces and offers all the freedoms that Muslim fundamentalism detests.
Spain and the rest of Europe must understand that, just like last century’s threat to their future was fascism, this century it is the militant form of Islam, and that just like Nazism’s in its time, the jihad’s excuses for its mass-murders are not even worth a hearing. Europe must concede it is at war, and has no choice but to fight it until it is won.
The jihadis see Europe and America as a common enemy against which they hope to play divide and conquer. The longer Europe waits to join with America in common cause, the more the war will escalate and spread, including within Europe. The sooner Europe joins the fight, the sooner these massacres will end and the cause of freedom and human rights will prosper.